Providence Journal , RI
Dec 26 2004
Bill Reynolds: Another year gone, although not without leaving
impressions
The Pats won another Super Bowl, and the Sox won their first World
Series title in 86 years. But sometimes you remember the little
things the most.
Here are four:
One night in May I was one of several former basketball players who
went back to Worcester Academy to honor our old coach, Dee Rowe, then
75 and recuperating from serious cancer surgery.
It was a night full of memory, and later I kept thinking of how some
lessons always stay with us, while so many others disappear through
the mists of time.
I had been 18 the year I spent at Worcester Academy, and it hadn’t
been a particularly easy time for me. I was homesick, lovesick, and
viewed the world through the myopia of someone who thought he was
going to be 18 forever. Suffice it to say I often clashed with Rowe,
an intense coach who talked about things like sacrifice and
commitment, dedication and tradition, words that often seemed to
float by my head like missed shots.
But for the past 40 years he’s made me feel like the most special
person in the world, even though I only played one year for him and
wasn’t the easiest kid in the world to coach back then. And I have
come to know he’s done that for so many who once played for him, and
how that is his special gift.
It’s not the easiest time to be a coach, not in an age where
entitlement and instant gratification always are on the roster. What
used to be called coaching is now to often thought of as criticism.
But I have come to know that I still carry Rowe’s voice around in my
head, know how much influence he had on all of us, even if I didn’t
always realize it at the time. It’s now 40 years later, and I can’t
remember one thing any teacher taught me at Worcester Academy, but I
remember lessons he taught me, even when I didn’t think I was
listening.
For good coaches matter.
Trust me.
It was an early morning in June and I was at the Veterans Memorial
Auditorium with a 26 year old named Sam Hajinyan.
He had first come to this country 13 years earlier, leaving his
native Armenia and all that was familiar, to be here in this new
country with its new dreams. What were the odds that day that five
years later he would be an All-State basketball player, his life
changed by a game he knew nothing about?
All he knew that first day at Park View Junior High School was that
other kids were laughing at him.
Nor did he like this new country. He had no friends. No real life he
cared about here. He was 13 years old, and he felt lost and alone, a
stranger in a strange land.
Then he found basketball.
It gave him something to do. It gave him something to care about. It
gave him friends. It gave him an identity. In short, it did all the
the things we like to think sports do. No small thing in a family
trying to survive in a new country. More important, basketball became
his language, his way of communicating, his passport to acceptance.
“I never would have made it without basketball,” he said.
Sports can have no better epitath.
For he has made it, has come so far from the scared, lonely kid who
first went to a junior high where kids laughed at him.
He went to junior college for two years, works two jobs, is planning
to open a restaurant with his brother, and on that bright and
beautiful morning in June he was one of of 600 people sworn in as
United States citizens. The ceremony was a testimony to the enduring
promise of America, this country that allows for people to dream of a
better life, something that’s often so easy for the rest of us to
take for granted.
“This is bigger than anything I can do,” Hajinyan said. “This is a
lovely day. This makes me complete.”
In truth, the Red Sox winning the pennant in 1967 was bigger for me
than their winning the World Series this past October. I was more of
a fan then. And that season had come out of nowhere, where this year
didn’t surprise me in the same way. Going into the the season I had
thought this Red Sox team had the best pitching I had seen in my
lifetime, and since I always had believed their longtime frustration
title had more to do with lack of pitching and managerial blunders
than curses, when they finally won it simply seemed it was about
time. Call me jaded.
Then a funny thing happened.
In the weeks that followed there were innumerable stories about what
it meant to the fans, all those reports of people going to cemetaries
and leaving mementos on the graves of departed family members.
Innumerable stories of how cathartic it was to so many people, an
emotional journey that transcended baseball. People of all ages, all
walks of life, all united by a baseball team that gave a region an
incredible moment.
So in the weeks since I’ve come to be reminded of the power of sports
to bring people together, give them a shared experience, no small
thing in a fractious society that too often seems disconnected by age
and income, race and political beliefs. Have come to be reminded
that, at their best, sports are always more important than what
happens on the field. That, at their best, sports always are
transformative, take us out of ourselves.
Reason enough to keep watching them.
The letter came in November from a woman whose son played on the
South Kingstown High School football team. It said how there were
only six seniors on the team and one of them was hurt. It said how
the team was 1-8, but that every Monday the seniors would come to
practice and start preparing for the next game, continuing to pour
their hearts into what had become a dismal season, and she wanted to
know why.
It was a legitimate question.
Why did these kids still care when so many kids these days have no
stomach for any kind of failure, no patience for anything less than
success? Why did they keep keeping on?
I discovered there were two main reasons: a bunch of kids who liked
each other, and had come to realize it’s a privilege just to be able
to play. And a coach who convinced them they all were going to do
whatever they could to do the best they could, regardless of what the
scoreboard said.
“There are no guarantees that you’re going to be successful,” said
Bruce Tardiff, the longtime South Kingstown coach. “It’s a lot like
life. No guarantees. The only guarantee is, can you look yourself in
the mirror and like what you see? These kids can.”
Can you learn any better lesson playing high school football?
I don’t think so.
Even if it came on the wrong end of the scoreboard.